The sun will be out. The grill will be sparked. The sodas (and beers) will be cold. You will (probably) get a day off work.
Just don't forget why we celebrate every fourth Monday in May.
The first Memorial Day was celebrated in 1866 by a group in Waterloo, NY, celebrating the Civil War veterans, according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
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President Johnson declared Waterloo, NY the birthplace for Memorial Day in 1966, 100 years after the initial celebration.
The holiday evolved into a day of remembrance of all military who have died in service.
Generally, people associate days like Memorial Days and Veterans Day with World War II veterans. The driving force behind the DVA has been baby boomers, so an emphasis on Vietnam will probably increase in the coming years.
But as a young man, the same age as many soldiers stationed overseas right now, I can't help but wonder about the military reputations of Generation X and Generation Y's service men and women.
Neither of the two generations has had a definitive "international conflict" to deal with, on the scale of World War II. And the conflicts that these two generations have dealt with do not have the philosophical subtext like Vietnam did in regards to the Cold War and communism vs. capitalism.
I know there's religion and a West vs. East mentality out there today, but in the moment it does not feel the same.
Here's what this all boils down to at this juncture in time
I like to celebrate holidays on this blog by pulling movie clips off YouTube. So in commemoration of the men and woman who served this country, I'm going to share clips from movies dealing with the conflicts of Generations X and Y, starting with ...
The Panama Deception
I'm starting the list off with a documentary that may not commemorate the service of military vets, but it sets the stage for military conflicts to come.
The Panama Deception won the 1992 Academy Award for best documentary film.
It won that most prestigious award for nonfiction film by detailing the failings of mainstream media to accurately report what happened in Panama in 1989.
Media portrayed the conflict as "America Helping the Poor" while not mentioning the U.S. agenda behind its involvement. Specifically that meant the renegotiation of the Torrijos-Carter treaty, which may have not happened if the nation state was not settled.
Possibly as a result of this event (and this movie), future conflicts would be looked at with a critical eye, leaving the service men and women of that and this current serving generation to be viewed differently than the heroes of past wars.
Jarhead
This 2005 film detailing Operation Desert Storm through the eyes of one skeptical marine may not have been one of the most popular films of the past 10 years.
Jarhead was based on the 2003 best selling autobiography from Anthony Swofford, a marine serving in the early '90s. The film and book are not war movies in the sense of Patton and Full Metal Jacket. But that's because it was a different conflict.
Operation Desert Storm was the first in a slew of unpopular U.S. conflicts in Iraq, a country we still occupy today.
Dealing with an unpopular war in a different generation, the movie tackles skepticism, an evolving military culture and comparison/contrasting of different generations of service men and women.
Blackhawk Down
This was the most entertaining and most popular movie to appear on this list. Because I'm getting long winded, I'll cut to the chase.
This movie was important because it captured an evolving theme in U.S. foreign policy. That is, we pick-and-choose when we step in to help during an incident of genocide (see Rwanda). And it doesn't always work out so well for us.
Generation Kill
This HBO mini-series details the early years of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Generation Kill provided civilians with a look into the dangers of this war, specifically in terms of friendly fire. There are several scenes in the series where soldiers are killed as a result of mistakes, not combat. While World War II has its heroes, like Patton and Eisenhower, what will the conflicts in Iraq have 50 years from now? I would argue every military operation has a hero, but will these men and women struggle to find the image that defines themselves 50 years from now?
The Hurt Locker
Combine a traditional military movie character who has a "maverick" type mentality and a plot that revolves around explosions; you get a thrilling film (an Academy Award).
I recently saw the Hurt Locker for this first time this weekend and here's what I got from it.
You can find stories in the New York Times every day about a bomb going of in the Middle East, killing dozens of people. But it seems impersonal. It's just another clip from the 24-hour news cycle.
This movie does a good job of focusing in on that aspect of military conflict, road side bombs set by civilian-style militants.
This movie, more than the others on this list (arguably), depicts why we should celebrate service men and women on days like Memorial Day. It showed that there are still American citizens dying over seas and that commemorative days need to be about more than barbecue and blockbuster summer movies.
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